


fly toward a secret sky

by polkadot



Series: la vache et le dauphin [4]
Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadot/pseuds/polkadot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about the "if you hurt him" speech is that it's pretty terrifying when delivered by someone who could literally knock your head off with a tennis ball.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fly toward a secret sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maartiinhaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maartiinhaa/gifts).



> **Notes** : As always, everything is happening in French and this is a translation. ;)
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : This is fiction and the characters in it are fictional.

“Mumble mumble mumblety mum.”

Seeing as how Benoit’s collapsed into the pillows in a tangle of bliss, he doesn’t really hear what Stan says, just dimly registers his voice. It’s a good voice, velvety and warm, and Benoit thinks he’d be happy to lie here and let it wash over him; this plan is particularly attractive since he’s not entirely sure he can move at the moment. However, the voice probably does actually want to convey something, not just to be listened to and adored, so after a minute he turns his head languidly on the pillow and raises an eyebrow.

Stan gets that complicated look on his face that means he’s struggling not to laugh. “You didn’t hear a word of that, did you?”

Benoit grins, showing his teeth; even that takes a considerable amount of effort. It’s worth it, though, to see Stan blink slowly, his lips parting. “I know boyfriends are supposed to listen and all that, but I just fucked you through the mattress, Stanley. You’re going to have to give me a moment to recover.”

Stan’s exasperated look has no fangs at all. (Not that Benoit’s going to tell him that, because it’s adorable. But then Benoit tends to think Stan’s pretty adorable at all times. It’d be a problem, except that Benoit has long since admitted defeat in that particular battle.) “I said, I’m going to go take a shower.”

Benoit looks him up and down, deliberately, watching the blush spread across his chest. “You look good with jizz on you. Sets off your abs.”

“ _Ben_ ,” Stan says, but he’s not mad, he’s just flushing and embarrassed, and when Benoit reaches for him he lets himself be pulled down.

He keeps the kiss short, though, more punctuation than anything else, and he pulls away before Benoit has the chance to even think about possibly someday in the distant future getting it up for round two. (Or round three – Benoit’s still deciding whether round-counting should be continuous, starting at daybreak and going till bedtime, or whether it should only include episodes within the same distinct escapade. He’d ask Stan, but that’s exactly the kind of question that would make Stan go all kinds of purple, so he’s saving it up for a rainy day.)

“Shower,” Stan repeats, dropping a quick kiss to the end of Benoit’s nose.

Benoit leans back into his pillows to unashamedly watch Stan set off for the bathroom.

“You’re looking at my ass again, aren’t you?” Stan calls over his shoulder.

Benoit snorts. Like that needs an answer. 

He closes his eyes for a minute, listening as the water turns on in the bathroom, listening to the faint sound of Parisian traffic outside their window, listening to…a phone go off somewhere?

It’s under the bed, he decides after a long considered moment. How it got under there, god only knows, although he suspects it might have been when he ripped his shorts off and flung them on the ground - Stan has this strange dislike of messy floors, and he tends to kick Benoit’s discarded clothes out of his way. (Benoit’s _trying_ to train him to be less uptight about these things, but training boyfriends takes time, and he’s only had a couple of months. He’ll manage it eventually.)

 _Buzz_.

Benoit really, really doesn’t want to move. 

_Buzzzzzzz_.

When the insistent buzzing won’t shut up, though, he finally uncurls himself and leans over to fumble underneath the bed, pushing aside various articles of clothing until his fingers close around something small and hard.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end sounds surprised. “Stan?”

Oh. Guess it wasn’t his phone after all. Whoops. Must have been in the pocket of Stan’s shorts, not his. Benoit had wondered where those had ended up. He has a powerful arm, and he doesn’t exactly _aim_ all the time – he distinctly remembers having better things to do when he pulled those shorts down Stan’s body, like getting Stan’s cock in his mouth as soon as humanly possible. To expect him to aim discarded shorts in such a situation (or to neatly fold them and put them on a chair, as Stan would no doubt like) is ludicrous.

He scratches absent-mindedly at his belly, grinning when he notices a love bite left behind. “Nope, this is Benoit.”

“It’s Roger,” the guy on the phone says, and okay, maybe Benoit should have recognised that voice right away, particularly since he’s kind of idolised the guy since he was a kid, but hey, he’s not Stan, he doesn’t have a long personal history with him. Also his brain is still not quite on line yet after earlier, so.

He gradually realises Roger’s still talking. “…thought I’d stop by and ask Stan.”

If Benoit was a decent person, he’d probably tell Roger to call back later, or volunteer to take a message. But Benoit has never claimed to be a decent person. Also, well – he’s not exactly sure what the feeling in his stomach _is_ , but it’s new and strange and growls something that sounds a lot like _Mine_.

“Sure,” he says, frowning down at his stomach, and tells Roger the room number.

After he hangs up, he starts looking around for clothes. He’s not entirely sure when Roger will show up, but he has the impression it won’t be long. And whatever the strange feeling in his stomach might suggest, he’s not going to answer the door naked. Even territorial impulses have their limits.

Most of his clothes, however, turn out not to have made the journey over from his room yet. Benoit’s only newly arrived in Paris, after all, and he’s had better things to do with his pre-Roland Garros time than trek all of his spare t-shirts over. (Like kiss Stan until his eyes crossed, and test out the springiness of Stan’s mattress, and count the freckles behind Stan’s knee again – there might be more since last time, you never know. Freckles are tricky little buggers.)

In the end, the clothing situation is easily solved. Much more easily than that time he’d accidentally slept over at Morgane’s and ended up making a walk of shame wearing a pink tshirt. (He likes to think he pulled it off.) Benoit may be equal opportunity in the boyfriend versus girlfriend department, but he can’t deny that borrowing clothing is a lot simpler when everyone has similar parts.

Similar, but not identical, which is probably why Roger blinks at him for a long moment when he opens the door. Benoit’s well aware that the shirt he’s grabbed doesn’t fit him, baggy and shapeless around his lean torso; it smells like Stan, though, soft and well-worn, and on a day like today the sponsor logo and its exhortation to “FLY” match seamlessly with Benoit’s mood.

He leans against the doorframe, letting Roger look his fill. Benoit in Stan’s hotel room, wearing Stan’s shirt, with shorts that may possibly be the wrong way 'round…

To his credit, the blinking is the only sign that Roger gives that anything is out of the ordinary. “Hello,” he says.

“Stan’s in the shower,” Benoit tells him, cheerfully, and resists the urge to drop a wink. That might be over-egging the pudding just a little bit. “You’re welcome to come in and wait if you want.”

Roger smiles, and there’s a flick of amusement in it. “That’s okay. I was just going to ask him if he wanted to get some dinner with us.”

If Benoit has anything to say about it, he and Stan aren’t leaving this hotel room until the morning. That’s one of the good things about hotels, room service. And also they wash your towels for you. And the minibar… Benoit shakes himself. “I can ask him.” (Although if he goes in that bathroom, he’s not entirely sure he’ll be able to resist climbing in that shower right along with Stan, and then Roger might be waiting out here for his answer for quite a while…)

“It sounds like you’re busy,” Roger says. “Another time.” 

“Another time,” Benoit agrees, and gives him a sunny smile in return.

Roger turns to go, but just as Benoit starts to push the door shut, he turns around again. “Ben.”

Ben’s what Stan calls him, but Benoit supposes Roger wouldn’t know that. “Yes?” 

(He thinks he does a pretty good job of hiding his impatience. He likes Roger a lot, despite strangely territorial stomachs, but if Roger stays much longer he’s going to be encroaching on Benoit’s Stan-in-a-towel time. Stan wandering around in a towel may be something Benoit never knew he was missing during the previous twenty-three years of his life, but now that he’s discovered it, he can’t do without.)

Roger’s smiling at him again, and this time there’s a mixture of ruefulness and affection there. He may think he’s hiding it well, but Benoit has a thoughtful quiet Swiss of his own, and he’s got quite good at interpreting them. “Look, Stan’s a good man. He’s also…”

Hot? Gorgeous? Hilarious? Wonderful? Benoit could do this all night. Except he has better plans. Hands-on plans. Also FIFA ass-kicking plans, because turning your best friend into your lover doesn’t have to mean that you can _only_ have sex with them. Sex is awesome, but so is Playstation. And pizza.

“…fragile,” Roger finishes, still looking dissatisfied at the word he’s finally chosen. “He cares a lot about things, you know.”

Oh. 

“Are you giving me the _if you hurt him I will kill you_ speech?” Benoit asks bluntly, too surprised to be circumspect. (Not that he’s immensely circumspect even under less surprising circumstances.) “Because I kind of already had it from Ilham, and sort of from Jo, and even Alexia babbled at me in a threatening manner. She’s pretty easy to bribe with ice cream, though, so…”

“I don’t need to threaten,” Roger says. His smile is faintly unnerving. “I can just serve at your head the next time we play. And I don’t miss a lot.”

Make that thoroughly unnerving.

Benoit swallows. “I’m fast,” he says, trying to keep his voice light. “I’ll move out of the way.”

Roger just looks at him.

Damn the man. Benoit sighs. “I’m not intending to hurt him.” He glances down, picking at the hem of his – Stan’s – shirt. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”

“Are you sure about this?” Roger asks, quietly. “Look, this isn’t going to be easy, if you do this.”

Like Benoit needs Roger fucking Federer to tell him that. Brooding may be Stan’s thing, but Benoit’s been known to try his hand at it a few times. Putting two tennis players together, with their crazy schedules and their assorted entourages and their demanding training routines – let alone their collected neuroses and learned coping strategies – well, it’s a thoroughly silly idea. A stupid idea, even, a monumentally stupid idea that has the potential to distract them from their work and even derail their careers if it goes wrong. Benoit doesn’t need GOAT-wisdom to tell him what’s at stake here.

Roger, however, has apparently taken Benoit’s momentary silence as an invitation to dispense more GOAT-wisdom. “It’s not for me to say. But if it’s just a fling…” He sighs. “I care for him, you know?”

“I know,” Benoit says. Wearing Stan’s shirt suddenly seems like a cheap stunt, a way to get a rise out of Roger that completely failed to land. He doesn’t know what his insides were thinking. He touches the fabric; its Stan-smell feels like a hug on his skin. “It’s not a fling.”

Roger waits for him to elaborate.

Usually Benoit has no problem with words, usually he’s a big cheerful chatterbox. Now he’s hesitating, looking for the right words and not finding them. Words are traitors – he seizes at them, feeling them trickle through his fingers. “I…Stan was my best friend, before…if I was just looking for a fling, I would never have chosen Stan.” He gestures, frustrated, as if movement can explain. “I wouldn’t do that to him. He…he deserves someone to make him happy. He deserves someone… someone who adores him, who makes him laugh and stops him from thinking too much and keeps him young. He deserves everything.” 

Abruptly, Benoit hears himself, and sees the image he must make, standing half-dressed in a hotel doorway lecturing Roger Federer of all people. What thirteen-year-old Benoit would think, he really doesn’t know.

He laughs, because sometimes you just have to laugh, and scrubs at his face.

“Okay,” Roger says, simply.

It’s Benoit’s turn to just look at him. 

“Okay,” Roger says again, and he’s smiling. It’s a less complicated smile this time, and somehow more real. Benoit could almost smile back, if he wasn’t still very much on his guard. 

“Just like that, you’re okay with me?” he asks, suspiciously.

Roger’s smile adds some teeth. “You might want to tell him sometime.”

 _Tell him what?_

But Roger doesn’t answer that question before he leaves, waving cheerfully and walking quickly away to rejoin his entourage in the hotel lobby, off to some no doubt famous and wonderful Parisian restaurant, or to a sponsor thing, or to do whatever it is he does when he’s not taking names and bossing people.

Benoit doesn’t remember much of their goodbye pleasantries, to be quite honest, because all he can hear is that question, resounding and echoing in his brain like the call of a particularly strident line judge. 

_Tell him what?_

~//~

Stan emerges from the shower at last, clean and steamy and wrapped in a too-small towel. 

“Missed me?” Stan asks, bending down to run a wrinkly finger along the shell of Benoit’s ear. “I thought I heard voices. Do we have company?”

“We did,” Benoit says, absent-mindedly. It seems ages ago that he thought he’d never move from the warm embrace of the pillows; it’s probably been all of twenty minutes. Maybe a half-hour. 

(Twenty minutes. That’s all.)

“Oh?” Stan looks mildly interested as he rummages in his suitcase. 

Benoit shakes himself. “Roger came by to invite you to dinner.”

Stan turns, and Benoit sees his eyes take in the purloined shirt, the rumpled shorts. For a moment, he wonders whether Stan will be annoyed – he doesn’t think so, but Stan’s always been a bit funny about Roger, just a bit reticent about their past, and Benoit’s never dug any further.

But when Stan’s mouth tightens, it’s in wry amusement, not annoyance. “You going to pee on my leg next?”

“Nah, I’m not really into that,” Benoit says. “I might steal a couple more of your shirts, though. They’re comfortable.”

Stan stops looking for another shirt – Benoit could tell him that at least some of them have migrated under the bed, if his haphazard searching for the phone earlier is an accurate guide – and comes to sit down next to him. “If you steal my shirts, what am I supposed to wear?”

“You can have some of mine if you want,” Benoit offers. “Or you could just not wear shirts. That works for me too.”

“Generous,” Stan says, and leans in for a kiss.

The broad expanse of warm freshly-showered skin under his hands is intoxicating, and Benoit nearly forgets to breathe for a moment. He loses himself in the slow slide of Stan’s tongue against his own, in the claiming strength of Stan’s hands on his hips, big and solid, in the coarse weave of Stan’s towel against his fingertips.

(Twenty minutes. Just twenty!)

“I think he was trying to scare me away,” he says, breathless against Stan’s mouth.

Stan’s eyes look as unfocused as Benoit’s feel, but he blinks himself back into coherence. “Rog? That doesn’t sound like him.”

Benoit presses himself against the thigh insinuating itself between his legs and starts to investigate the bottom of Stan’s jawline.

After a moment, Stan adds, “Did it work?”

Benoit bites him, just a sharp little nip, just enough to thrill as Stan’s arms tighten around him, as Stan’s breath shudders out in a helpless moan. 

He’s never going to get tired of this. He’s never going to get tired of the way Stan trembles when you kiss his collarbone, of the way Stan drops his head against yours to pant, of the way Stan whimpers when you get your mouth around his cock -

He’s never going to get tired of the way Stan’s eyes light up when you come in a room, of the way Stan moves aside wordlessly to give you space next to him on each and every locker room bench, of the way Stan smiles at you as if you’re the only person in the world –

He’s never going to get tired.

(Twenty minutes, maybe half-an-hour. It’s a short time for the world to move.)

Benoit’s not a big thinker. He’s not Stan, he doesn’t drift off into daydreams and live in the clouds. Oh, he thinks, of course, and he’s known to have his melancholy moods, but on the whole, he lives in the present. He lives for today, for now, for laughter and fun and joy; he lets the future fend for itself.

(But maybe the world already moved. Maybe he’s just now noticing.)

Stan’s skin is warm against his. 

“Nobody’s ever going to scare me away,” Benoit tells him. “You’re stuck with me.”

If his kisses are slightly more ferocious than usual, Stan doesn’t mention it.

Benoit wrecks all of Stan’s laudable getting-clean work, and doesn’t bother to apologise. He figures joining Stan in the shower this time is apology enough; they probably waste half the hot water in Paris, but they do _eventually_ tumble out, laughing and scrounging for clean towels and shirts, trying to find the room service menu and searching for the Playstation controllers. 

Stan catches Benoit watching him halfway through talking to the room service people. He cups the phone against his shoulder and arches an eyebrow. “What?”

Benoit smiles at him, just smiles. “Nothing.”

(Someday, someday soon, he’ll tell Stan.

Tonight, he smiles.)

**Author's Note:**

> This is love:  
> to fly toward a secret sky,  
> to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. 
> 
> ~ Rumi (1207-1273)


End file.
